When early on we did a blog on the most difficult thing to teach in the teaching of writing, I was at a loss to know what it could be. I now have a feeling that reviewing your peer’s work is definitely one of the most difficult things to teach and to do.
Anyway, here I am reviewing Leah’s teaching philosophy. I am glad that Leah did an assignment on teaching philosophy since we are in the same grading group and this might give me some insight into my colleague’s teaching values. In reviewing Leah’s philosophy of teaching, I came across some core beliefs that resonate with my teaching philosophy. Leah begins by talking about language and that her core value finds roots in the belief that language is a product of one’s environment. I think it is interesting the way Leah draws the connection between language and environment, and how she situates agency at the cross-section of the two.
Leah does a great job laying out her core principles of teaching. It gives the reader a broad idea about what Leah intends to talk about in her teaching philosophy. I could relate to her principle of incorporating external reading material in classroom. I think this a good idea to introduce students to reading outside of the classroom. Since I value reading a lot, I think introducing external texts is rather essential in the teaching of composition.
When Leah explains a student’s “writing environment” as “a collection of unchallenged truths,” I think she makes a great point. After all, writing is a process of arriving at the truth. What better way of teaching writing than challenging those that already exist! What better way than to critically evaluate the notions that we thrust on ourselves or rather that we allow others to thrust on us! Leah talks about using Classical theory to teach rhetoric in FYI. Again, I think is a great approach to introduce students to critical thinking.
I also find it interesting that Leah argues for students to be good writers not only to succeed at workplace, but also as good citizens. Leah talks about the importance of technology, which without doubt is indispensable to the teaching of writing or for any kind of teaching for that matter.
Another great idea that Leah incorporates in her teaching philosophy is that students need to engage in civic activities and public writing. I find this very interesting, but I would like to read in detail about the assignments that Leah would have her students do for public writing. What kind of “civic engagements” would such assignments require? Would these be individual or group-oriented?
I think Leah nails it when she says that she’s not looking for the “correct method of composition”, but for students to discover their “own method of composition.” This is beautifully put and reflects the central idea behind teaching writing. I think I will take a leaf from Leah’s book and edit my own philosophy to make it more specific and coherent.
Hey Nidhi, thanks for choosing to review my analysis + teaching philosophy! I think you make a great point when you mention that it might help us reach a further understanding in our grading group-- maybe we can all swap philosophies sometime!
ReplyDeleteAs far as assignments, I'm still a relatively new teacher (I've only taught four semesters of FYC prior to this, and here I very much feel like I'm starting over) but a lot of it has involved interacting with the campus community-- I've taken students to art galleries to write critiques, had them attend school clubs/organizations and write rhetorical analysises (I have nooo idea how to write the plural for that haha) based upon the promotional material, had them submit opinion pieces to the school newspaper, and use the campus as a scavenger hunt for identifying different argumentation styles. I like getting students physically out of the classroom-- I'm a big fan of open-air sort of learning I guess.
Here, I haven't really had an opportunity to integrate a lot of my teaching philosophy since it's been a lot adjusting, learning, and, as you know, grading ;). I hope that if I'm teaching 1301 again next semester, I can make more modifications that incorporate lesson plans more inclusive of my own philosophy. Right now I'm mostly playing by the book until I get calibrated to the 1301 system.
Nice review, Nidhi, of Leah's analysis. Yes, reviewing a peers' work can be very challenging, indeed, especially in a semi-public space like a blog. Being objective, being critical yet helpful, is imperative. I like the connection to finding one's own method of composition to what Shaughnessy says about diving in. That is, ultimately students have to work at finding where their "scratch" starting point is, and move from there, and it's our job to enable different entry points, enabling students to start somewhere in order to progress toward an ultimate end, which could be civic engagement, for instance. Yancey, too, says we should use rhetorical canons, like invention, but that we must see composition in a new key, perhaps including global and technological concerns.
ReplyDeleteYou might enjoy reading Irv Peckham on post-process thinking. He just posted his thoughts on PPT in his blog. Reminds me of something we've been talking in class this past week: writing should be engaging for students (and for teachers) in order to maximize learning.
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